On his Master Zend Framework site today Matthew Setter has posted the first part of a series looking at working with sessions in Zend Framework 2 applications.

To help work around [the stateless nature of the language], PHP introduced the concept of sessions, which allows for storing information across requests. However, like most things, as application’s have become more complex, the ability to interact with sessions in a way that matches the needs of the application has continued to grow. Gladly, in Zend Framework 2, a set of classes is available, which helps reduce the complexity of managing session information, whether that’s interaction, configuration or backend storage, without placing too much distance between you and the underlying PHP implementation, or adding too much complexity in the process.

Using the ZF2Skeleton as a base, he shows you how to add session support to the overall project in a few simple steps:

Update Module.php to initialize the session

Create a new container & store some data

Retrieve it later

There's not too much code change involved, but the snippets to add/update are included. In the next part of the series, he'll look at validation, preventing hijacking and using different backend storage methods.